South Dakota’s Earliest Listings in the National Register of Historic Places

Liz Almlie, Historic Preservation Specialist, SD State Historical Society

Federal historic preservation work has had a 100+ year evolution with key pieces of legislation being the Antiquities Act in 1906 that created National Monuments, and the Historic Sites Act of 1935 that formalized the Historic American Buildings Survey and created National Historic Landmarks.  The legislation with the most expansive impact today is the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which, among other things, has provisions for a National Register of Historic Places and State Historic Preservation Offices.  At its core, the National Register is an honorary program – a way to research, record, and recognize historic places that meet certain criteria.  It has been a national, permanent collection of the history of America in its architecture, landscapes, and archaeology.  Over the years, there have also been review processes put in place for government decision-making that might impact historic properties, and there have been grants and other incentive programs set up to assist in the preservation, restoration, and rehabilitation of National Register sites.

The very first listings in the National Register of Historic Places in South Dakota were those that had earlier become National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) and were brought into the National Register semi-automatically.  In South Dakota, that included Mount Rushmore, the Deadwood Historic District, and the Wounded Knee Massacre Site, as well as seven archaeological sites that had been made NHLs in July 1964.  The Blood Run National Historic Landmark (now partly designated as Good Earth State Park) was created in 1970.  After its organization in about 1972, the South Dakota State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) often worked with local historical societies to identify new places for nomination to the National Register. 

The first two new National Register nominations for South Dakota were approved in 1972, for the Austin-Whittemore House in Vermillion, now the home of the Clay County Historical Society, and the Custer County Courthouse in Custer, now the 1881 Courthouse Museum. 

———————————

Custer County Courthouse

The Custer County Courthouse was constructed in 1881, just a few years after the 1874 Custer Expedition and the 1877 act of Congress that took the Black Hills out of the Great Sioux Reservation.  In the boom expansion of mining, ranching, and townsites, a county government with deed registration, land plats, taxation, and court facilities was in high demand for those looking to regulate the potential chaos.  The county chose to build a structure that visually communicated solidity and architectural sophistication, a Victorian Italianate style building out of brick that was two stories on a raised basement.  It must have been a tremendous contrast to the wood-frame false-front commercial buildings along main street, and the numerous small frame and log houses surrounding that street.  Ten years later, in 1891, the Sanborn Fire Insurance map indicates there were only twelve other two-story buildings on “Custer Avenue” (now Highway 16 / Mt. Rushmore Road) and only four other brick buildings, including a bank, two groceries, and the Kleemann House hotel (also Italianate in style).

According to a later account, the courthouse’s architect was Dr. R.D. Jennings (1852-1916), who then lived in Deadwood [Hot Springs Weekly Star (SD), February 17, 1899].  Jennings and his wife Mattie moved to Hot Springs in 1882, where he was part of the company that laid out the new town and was a proprietor of one of the first mineral spas.  He also was recorded as having designed the prominent Minnekahta Hotel in Hot Springs, schools in Deadwood and Custer, a courthouse for Pennington County, and several residences.  In c.1889-1890, he continued his medical education in Chicago and London, and then returned to his practice in Hot Springs.  He served on the State Board of Health and was a manager of the Battle Mountain Sanitarium, the federal veterans’ home.

The old courthouse was listed in the National Register as a new facility was being built, expected to open in the spring of 1973.  The nomination noted that the local historical society was interested in what it’s future would hold – “Its downtown location and proximity to an historical park make the Courthouse an excellent prospect for adaptive uses either commercial or historical.”  On February 6, 1973, shortly after listing in November 1972, the courthouse was the site of another historically-significant event, the protests of members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) over the criminal case following the murder of Wesley Bad Heart Bull, a 20-year-old Lakota man from the Pine Ridge reservation.  Later that month, AIM occupied Wounded Knee in a large protest demonstration that lasted over two months. 

The Custer Country Historical Society ended up with the old courthouse building, and they opened the 1881 Courthouse Museum in September 1976.

Custer County Courthouse nomination and photographs: https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail?assetID=23188300-6b32-42f3-92a2-8ab69c4c4c88.

The 1881 Courthouse Museum: http://www.1881courthousemuseum.com/.

———————————————————

Austin-Whittenmore House

When it was listed in the National Register, the Austin-Whittemore House in Vermillion had recently been acquired by the Clay County Historical Society, and, like the Custer Courthouse, it was brick in an Italianate style.  The house was built in the early 1880s, after the lower town of Vermillion sustained heavy flood damage in the spring of 1881.  Another nomination from Vermillion notes that Andrew Pickett, a local carpenter/builder, had constructed the Austins’ House.  It was nominated to the National Register for its architecture, but the nomination document also included a short biography of Horace J. Austin, as “builder of the house and its first occupant.”  Horace Austin had first come to the area in 1859, just after the Treaty of Washington in 1858 had reduced the Yankton Dakota lands to a reservation along the eastern bank of the Missouri River above the Nebraska state line.  Austin found ample and profitable work as a land surveyor, and he also eventually served in the legislature. 

The nomination does not mention his wife, Rachel Ross Austin.  Rachel Ross had come to Dakota Territory with her mother in 1867 and taught at least one year in the “old log schoolhouse” before marrying Austin.  She was a ‘founding mother’ who had a role in the start of the local First Baptist Church and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.  She also served on the school board, donated land for a city park, and worked for the women’s suffrage movement, the Cemetery Improvement Association, and the County Fair association.  Upon her death in 1904, the mayor proclaimed that all businesses and schools would close for her funeral hour.  According to her biography in Doane Robinson’s 1904 History of South Dakota—”All of Mrs. Austin’s public and private benefactions originated in her own home and radiated from that home out into the community.”  The city of Vermillion has named one of their elementary schools for her.

The Austins’ house passed on to their adopted daughter Helen “Pansy” Whittemore, whose son eventually deeded the house to the Clay County Historical Society.  

Porch detail at the Austin-Whittenmore House

Austin-Whittemore House nomination and photographs: https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail?assetID=8d1b0376-948e-4895-bd16-132182148c08.

The Austin-Whittemore House in the Historic American Building Survey, Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/item/sd0007/.

The Clay County Historical Society: http://www.cchssd.org/.

———————————————————

In subsequent years the number of National Register listings grew steadily, branching out far more widely from brick Italianate buildings.  There were also an increasing number of historic districts—groups of buildings with collective historical significance and integrity.  The first district was the Fort Meade District in May 1973, a collection of former military buildings near Sturgis, and the second was the residential neighborhood and churches of the Sioux Falls (now called Cathedral) Historic District, in June 1974.  The numbers of approved nominations in South Dakota hit a decade high in the Bicentennial year, 1976, with 42 listings.

Today, National Register nominations are more thorough documents than those produced in the early years.  For an individual site, they are more likely to be thirty pages than four.  The majority of new listings in the National Register are initially brought to the SHPO from inquiries by property owners.  We have a Preliminary Assessment Form that can be sent to our office with photographs of a property for an initial staff opinion.  For those we determine to be eligible, our staff writes a number of the new nominations, although occasionally SHPO or the property owner contracts with a historian or architectural historian to write the initial draft.  Another key avenue for new listings is through local historic preservation boards or commissions, who can receive annual sub-grants from SHPO for the survey, research, and drafting of nominations if they are part of the federal Certified Local Government program.  Some other nominations originate with Tribal Historic Preservation Offices or from federal land-managing agencies.  SHPO also works on amendments to nominations.  Amendments can update information on the status of the physical property or its boundary, or they can add to or correct the historical context information.  A number of historic districts have been amended to be more useable documents for relevant funding incentives and review laws.  Nominations and amendments are ultimately submitted to the Keeper of the National Register, an office within the National Park Service, for final approvals. 

Many of South Dakota’s National Register nominations can be found on the National Park Service’s website: https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/BasicSearch/.  The SHPO office can also provide copies.

Leave a Reply